Various states now track the sale of cold medications that methamphetamine labs use to create meth. Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arkansas have launched tracking systems, and Iowa, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Washington, Kansas and Louisiana plan to do so, according to a recent Stateline.org story. Oklahoma and Oregon have moved the usually over-the-counter pills to behind the counter.
Such efforts have helped, but meth production persists. Meth makers have now come up with a new formula that does not require as much pseudoephedrine as the old one did. Now, meth no longer has to be be produced in a meth lab. The New York Times reported that some people are using their cars as meth labs:
The story added:
“With disturbing frequency, officials in Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee and other states say they, too, are confronting the problem of trashed labs, and are scrambling to identify and clear the debris — which is often tinged with the drug and other noxious chemicals — before the public stumbles upon it.
” ‘We just drive around, and off the side of the road, there’s one, there’s one, and there’s another,’ said Paul G. Matyas, the undersheriff in Kalamazoo County, Mich. ‘We’ll spend all day doing nothing but that.’
“Mr. Matyas said someone finding a bottle on the side of the road ‘might think somebody didn’t drink all the pop out of their bottle.’
” ‘Well, that’s not pop,’ he said. ‘You pick it up, and it could explode. Acid could spill and burn you. At one of the sites about a week ago, we found a dead deer, and I know exactly what happened.’
“In some states, officials estimate that the majority of meth lab seizures are now transportable ones, and that over the last two years, the mobile process has supplanted the home-based method of high-yield production that came to be one face of the meth scourge last decade.”
Stateline.org’s story about what states are doing to control the ingredients that meth labs use offered some hope that new tracking laws and regulations were making a dent in the problem. The New York Times story seems to indicate, however, that whatever progress has been made may be short-lived.
